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The Future of Gundam

Despite a brief period of absolute darkness, Gundam's actually been having a fairly good time lately. Entering their 35th anniversary, Gundam launched October's Gundam Build Fighters series to surprising fanfare. What was thought to be a sad attempt by Bandai to force toys down fans' throats turned out to be...well, an awesome way for Bandai to shove toys down fans' throats. (I mean, it's still a toy commercial...it's just a well done one.)

And as the current season winds down while fans hope for a second season, Gundam has just recently held a live event, "Gundam 35th Anniversary - Rise!", to show us the current future of Gundam.

The first is the return of series creator Yoshiyuki Tomino to television with his sequel to the original Gundam line, Gundam - Reconquista in G. Intended to air this fall, it's set in the calendar after Universal Century. It follows a character named Beruri Zenamu, a mobile suit pilot that's a member of the Capital Guard, an organization in charge of protecting a space elevator. It's scheduled to air in the fall of this year.

What stands out aboutReconquista is it's Tomino's return to Gundam, a series he hasn't been involved with to this extent since 1999's Turn A Gundam, a series that initially had very mixed fan reactions. And since then, Tomino's other forays into series writing have created series that were tonally, almost the opposite of what one would expect from Gundam. The senseless death and destruction borne from the mind of a man dealing with depression, replaced with far more optimistic yarns. I have NO doubt that Tomino's return to Gundam will have no shortage of fans excited to see what he will create this time, to see if he can craft a new legend. But I think having that Tomino come back to Gundam will create something different from what anyone's expecting.

Meanwhile, basically taking Gundam: The Unicorn's place for high-budget serial mini-series is Gundam: The Origin. Based on a recently ended manga, the first film airs in the Spring 2015, following the story of Char Aznable and Sayla Mass before the now classic One Year War story began.

The weird thing about The Origin is it's actually a fairly lengthy manga, with over twenty volumes of material to be adapted, so I expected it to be the series while Reconquista became the movie or OVA series. Still, the animation looks to be of similar quality to Unicorn, so I guess it's whatever.

Either way, there's never been a better time to be a fan of the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise, and I hope both these series turn out to be good. (And that we get a season two of Build Fighters next year.)

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